


Subject Zero's Guide to Kicking Templar Ass

by ariabrook



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Mass Effect
Genre: Crossover, Mass Effect/Dragon Age Crossover, Swearing, Violence, gratuitous depictions of templars being slaughtered, i don't really know how magic works, jack is an apostate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariabrook/pseuds/ariabrook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is a mage--probably the most powerful one recorded in the past three centuries--and she's just earned the title of apostate for the umpteenth time by escaping from (yet another) pesky Circle. But traipsing through the woods isn't exactly safe for even the most deadly of apostates. And there are worse things than templars and bears in this forest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subject Zero's Guide to Kicking Templar Ass

**Author's Note:**

> A Mass Effect/Dragon Age crossover inspired by a discussion I had with my friend Emily about how Jack/Subject Zero would fit into the DA universe. DISCLAIMER: I have no idea how magic works. I tried.

A thick river of fog hung low over the forest, weaving in between the trunks of trees and covering their twisted roots from view. It was early morning, almost dawn, but the faint light of the sun had not yet permeated the canopy of leaves. The barely discernable path was hard to find even in full sunlight, so it was nearly impossible at night. It had once been a deer path, most likely, but the stirring of less than natural forces had planted unease in their hearts. Animals were said to be ten times more susceptible to changes in the Fade--some were rumored to foretell events before they happened--but even the dullest of halla could not have missed the signs. And so, proving more reasonable than most humans, they’d migrated. It had probably been the best decision of their relatively short lives.

But for Jack, the disappearance of deer--and therefore, food--was another annoyance to add on top of the colossal pile of fucking insanity that was her life. Another traveler, one more herbally or poetically inclined, would have spent a long time picking moss and scraping the bark off of trees, or marvelling at the quiet, eerie landscape they found around then. Not Jack. She’d learned very early on that appearances got you nowhere.

Moss, though, was a different matter entirely. Sure, it was soggy and tasted like shit, but some of it was edible. Jack knelt to the forest floor, her knees nestled in the dark earth, and scraped a fingernail full of moss off of a tree root. She brought it to her nose, sniffed, and then licked the tip of her finger. The taste lingered on her tongue for a second, then she turned her head and spat.

“Fuck.” Nope, she wasn’t desperate enough for that yet.

She still had two small loaves of bread and a vial of lyrium left over from the templars she’d killed four days ago. They’d packed light--assholes--and hadn’t even had the sense to include meat in their diet. If she’d been one of the really deranged mages, she would have considered chopping them up for food. But she wasn’t, so she hadn’t.

It had been a week since she fled the “security” of the Circle. While this one hadn’t been as big as others she’d… ah… visited, it had been no less vicious. Honestly, the way she’d gotten herself caught was incredibly stupid. A little too much wine and a few encouragements at a roadside bar, and she was lifting clingy men into the air. It had been fun in the moment, but one spectator had chickened out and gone running to the Chantry. She’d gone through a dozen of their finest templars and decimated almost the entire inn before they knocked her out. And she hadn’t even been at her best.

Jack had spent more time unconscious in the Circle than she had conscious. As soon as she came out of her drunken haze, she’d broken the flimsy chains that those pious Chantry sisters had put on her and slaughtered more templars than she could count. Her captors hadn’t even had time to take a phylactery. Pity. She would’ve enjoyed shattering it.

A few days after her grand flight, a few of the remaining templars had come after her. She’d dispatched them quickly, without any of her usual flashiness--and only because she needed their packs intact. Now, they were useless to her. Just like everything else in this blighted forest.

Still attempting to cleanse the taste of the moss from her tongue, Jack rose to her feet, not even bothering to brush off the dirt on her knees. She’d had much worse in her time. Once, back in Pragia Castle when they were still sending trainees at her, she’d had to fight a huge bear of a mage that left her spitting up blood in the dirt.

His head had rolled a few seconds later.

She readjusted the straps of the pack that hung against her shoulders, pulling the fabric tighter to her back, and set off down the deer trail again. For a while she’d blundered aimlessly through the forest, torching trees and bushes when she needed to, but eventually she’d found a track to follow. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t flame whatever was in her way. She had to have a little bit of fun, right?

The path was twisting and dark, so she conjured up a ball of light to illuminate the way. She continued through the forest this way for an hour, maybe two, as the pale circle of the sun rose overhead. Every leaf she passed was coated in dew, and in the few stripes of land where the sun shone through, the sunlight gave each bead of water a radiant shine. Further along, Jack encountered a family of rabbits that turned tail and ran when they saw her coming. On a whim, she let them go. Something about the forest inspired… well, not calm, she’d never known that, but it made her blood less volatile. One Chantry brother had once tried to preach to her about the tranquility of nature, and she laughed right in his face. The only Tranquility she knew was the kind that turned you into a mindless fucking slave. And she’d rather burn in whatever foul hell the Chantry imagined a thousand times over before undergoing that.

A rustling in the undergrowth ahead interrupted her violent thoughts, and she instantly dropped into a fighting stance, twirling her staff in one hand. Whatever it was, it was too big to be another rabbit, and too loud to be deer. Maybe a bear?

She caught a glance of silver armor through the low hanging branches and smiled. Even better. Templars.

Jack wasn’t one for waiting, so swept her staff horizontally and sent a spray of flame in their direction. By the screams and yelps that echoes from beyond the bush, she’d caught at least a few of them on fire. She grinned. Now this was her idea of fun.

Without paying credence to the fire licking at the edges of the makeshift trail she’d cleared, Jack charged straight into the fight, activating a spell that would encase her body in a magic shield as she ran. The first templar was already on fire, screaming up a storm, and her magic-enhanced kick to his chest felled him easily. The second barely had time to draw her sword before Jack delivered a burst of ice in her face. Combined with the heat from the fire, the cold impact of her spell sent smoke rushing up into the unlucky warrior’s face, and she screamed. Jack shut her up by slamming her staff into the side of the templar’s head. Her body hit the ground with a thud, and Jack turned to the rest of them.

Aside from the two she’d already felled, there were six left. Pshh. Six. She could take them down in her sleep. The one closest to her looked a few years younger than her, so she raised her hand and his body went with it. She sent him flying into a tree. The next one came at her with his sword, but she didn’t even bother ducking out of the way. Instead, she headbutted him right in the stomach, and he collapsed to the ground with a crunch. She wouldn’t be surprised if she’d broken his spine.

Good.

Four down, four to go. By this time, the man who looked to be the templars’ commander had barked out orders to what remained of his crew. Jack could see one of them start to light up with the blue shimmer of a dispelling magic aura. Nice try. One quick twirl of her staff and he was flat on his back, screaming in pain as acid tore away his armor and devoured his flesh.

Jack raised her weapon above her head, drawing power from the seemingly endless resources inside her body. In her periphery, she could sense the templars charging toward her, swords drawn. She’d lowered most of her shield in order to devote her full attention to her staff, and she knew that she was vulnerable to sharp edges now more than ever.

She brought the staff down with a thud.

Lightning shot across the clearing, crackling down to strike her pursuers. Three of them dropped within seconds, writhing with pain, but bolts of light still rippled and snaked across their bodies, until smoke rolled off of their skin and they stopped twitching. Only their commander was left now, whimpering on the ground like a wounded dog. Jack smirked. Nothing was more satisfying than a templar in pain. This one she could kill with her bare hands.

Placing the staff across her back, Jack stalked toward the fallen templar with earnest, deliberate steps. As she went, she lit up one hand with lightning and the other with fire. She could hear his whining as soon as she got within a three feet of him, could see his shoulders shake within two. At one foot away from him, she crouched down to his eye level, waited for his head to turn towards hers, and as soon as he looked her in the eyes, she seized his throat and yanked him up in the air.

A roar boiled from her throat as she augmented the power in her right hand, sending sparks roiling across the knight captain’s face, into his mouth and nose and sinking into his eyes. Her other hand found the fabric underneath his armor, igniting it with the belligerent flames she held in her palm. Only when she could feel solely the pulse of her own magic in the templar’s veins instead of the flow of his own blood did she let him drop.

His body crumpled at the feet of another woman--this one wiry and strong, with a determined gaze. Jack immediately noticed that she wasn’t wearing the armor of a templar. The newcomer’s eyes flicked from Jack, to the knight captain’s body, and then back to the apostate.

“Impressive,” was the only word she said.

Jack brushed her hands together, creating sparks where her palms touched. “Child’s play. I could kill more with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my fuckin’ back.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Jack growled. “You asking for a demonstration?”

“I think this one suffices.” She swept a hand broadly in front of her, indicating the ash covered clearing, the eight (faintly smoking) templar bodies, and the apostate herself.

Jack allowed a faint smile to pull at the corner of her mouth. “And just who the fuck are you?”

The woman’s gaze met her own, and Jack sensed the undeniable feeling that this woman was not one to be trifled with.

“I’m Commander Shepard. And you are my latest recruit.”


End file.
